Highwoods To Develop MetLife's Office Building In Weston

Highwoods Properties, Inc. (NYSE:HIW) announced that it has been selected by MetLife, Inc. (NYSE:MET) to develop a third office building for its global technology campus in Cary’s mixed-use Weston planned unit development (PUD). The Raleigh, NC-based real estate investment trust (REIT) will invest $63 million for this 219,000 square feet, fully pre-leased building. Construction on this build-to-suit project is slated to begin this summer and is likely to be complete in first-quarter 2019.

Notably, Highwoods developed the first two buildings for MetLife in 2015. The addition of the third building in the 655,000-square-foot campus took the REIT’s total investment to around $172 million. Also, with this project, the development pipeline of Highwoods has risen to 2 million square feet. This amounts to an expected investment of around $612 million, which is 85% pre-leased on a dollar-weighted basis.

Headquartered in NY, MetLife is a leading provider of insurance and financial services to a broad spectrum of individual and institutional customers and is a trusted and highly regarded customer of Highwoods. The successful growth of MetLife in Weston indicates the availability of strong technology-oriented employment pool that attracts companies to this area.

Shares of Highwoods underperformed the Zacks categorized REIT and Equity Trust - Other industry in the last three months. Shares of the company decreased 3.5%, whereas the industry lost 0.8%. However, in the last 30 days, its full-year 2017 FFO per share estimates moved up.



Currently, both Highwoods and MetLife carry a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold).

Investors interested in the REIT space, may consider better-ranked stocks like Easterly Government Properties, Inc. (NYSE:DEA) and Gaming and Leisure Properties, Inc. (NASDAQ:GLPI) , each carrying a Zacks Rank #2. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

In the last 30 days, Easterly Government Properties’ FFO per share for second-quarter 2017 remained unchanged at 31 cents.

In the last 30 days, Gaming and Leisure Properties’ FFO per share for second-quarter 2017 increased 1.3% to 77 cents.

Note: FFO, a widely used metric to gauge the performance of REITs, is obtained after adding depreciation and amortization and other non-cash expenses to net income. All EPS numbers presented in this write up represent FFO per share.

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